Tuesday, December 23, 2008

More on the FALSE, MALICIOUS, PERJUROUS prosecution of Alabama Dem. Governor DON SEIGELMAN by Karl Rove's friends in Alabama US DA's office -

Here is the shortest, most concise summary yet on the KARL ROVE LYNCH-MOB Republican partisan PROSECUTION of former Alabama Democratic Governor DON SIEGELMAN.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2008-12-20/karl-rove-destroyed-my-life/


As a "Liberal," "Democrat" (Jewish, even) governor of a DEEP SOUTH STATE, Don Siegelman was in 2002 a huge target of the Bush-Cheney-ROVE Republican SMEAR, SLIME, and DESTROY campaign, that same awful year that saw
#1. the DEATH of Senator Paul Wellstone in the final weeks as he was cruising to an easy re-election in Minnesota (and his memory would be SMEARED by the Karl Rove Republicans to assist Norm Coleman's race when Minnesota favorite son and former VICE PRESIDENT Walter Mondale stepped in to fill Wellstone's Democratic campaign shoes),
#2. the SMEARING of Georgia Senator MAX CLELAND as "WEAK ON AMERICA's SECURITY" - Rovian GOP ads for Cleland's opponent, Rethuglican Saxby Chambliss, featured Clelands photos between those of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein - DESPITE Senator Cleland having left three limbs in Vietnam during the Vietnam war! and
#3. following by less than a dozen months the ANTHRAX ATTACKS on DEMOCRATIC SENATORS Tom Daschle (then Senate Majority Leader) and Patrick Leahy's (then Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman) offices; and
#4. the smear-campaign against siting Alabama Democrat Governor Don Siegelman, and the relentless, lynch-mob prosecution of Seigelman by Republican prosecutors who were FRIENDS and BUSINESS ALLIES of Karl Rove in the US Department of Justice District Attorney's offices in Alabama.

The Karl Rove organized REPUBLICAN PROSECUTION of Don Siegelman is a TEXT-BOOK EXAMPLE of NEO-CONFEDERATE politics in the Deep South,
using Bush & Cheney's WAR POWERS at the very height of their "war powers presidency" - the months after the trauma of 9-11 and leading up to and immediately after the invasion of Iraq - to DESTROY POLITICAL OPPOSITION to one-party rule in America, at a time when the White House had near dictatorial powers over the US budget, US government, the US military, and tremendous influence over the US press & media.

What is seldom remarked is how the NEO-CONFEDERATE ASSAULT on "Liberal Democrats", especially in the Deep South and Western states (like Minnesota, South Dakota, New Mexico, etc.) was ENABLED by the NEO-CONSERVATIVE AIPAC Jewish (Israel-first) lobby - even when the target was a sitting Jewish governor of a Deep South state!

(Note: The Rove/GOP smear campaign against Governor Siegleman was started while he was still the sitting Governor, and, according to this account by former Governor Siegelman, below, it was that relentless 2002 Republican SMEAR CAMPAIGN that put Siegelman's Republican gubernatorial opponent in range to "win" that 2002 (re-)election away from Siegelman.)

The Neo-CONSERVATIVE/neo-CONFEDERATE ALLIANCE is at the HEART of America's aggressive, unilateral, hegemonic Foreign Policy; that unholy alliance is at the heart of America's WAR POLICY; and that alliance is at the heart of America's ECONOMIC POLICY, which is to say, "THE WAR ON THE AMERICAN ECONOMY - FROM WITHIN AMERICA!" as some critics have called it.

Here's New York Times columnist Paul Krugman giving at least one item of evidence to the notion that THERE IS A BiPARTISAN ASSAULT ON THE AMERICAN ECONOMY:

"DEMOCRAT" Senator CHUCK SCHUMER, REFUSES TO REVIEW "outrageous tax-loopholes" that benefit greedy, corrupt EXECUTIVES at the EXPENSE of American taxpayers and the American economy (because of course he gets huge campaign donations from the financial lobby)! -



http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/19/opinion/19krugman.html
<< At the crudest level, WALL STREET's ILL-GOTTEN GAINS CORRUPTED and CONTINUE TO CORRUPT POLITICS, in a nicely BIPARTISAN WAY. From Bush administration officials like Christopher Cox, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, who looked the other way as evidence of financial fraud mounted, to Democrats who still haven’t closed the outrageous tax loophole that benefits executives at hedge funds and private equity firms (HELLO, SENATOR SCHUMER), politicians have walked when money talked. >>


That is but ONE ITEM that buttresses there is a notion of A BIPARTISAN ASSAULT ON THE AMERICAN ECONOMY, coming from WITHIN AMERICA, and indeed, coming from WITHIN ELEMENTS of the US CONGRESS & Congressional "LEADERSHIP" itself - a FREE PASS to massive financial fraud by banking executives who donate to both parties in Congress, AT THE EXPENSE of THE AMERICAN ECONOMY.

=============================================
KARL ROVE DESTROYED MY LIFE
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2008-12-20/karl-rove-destroyed-my-life/

Former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman blames Republican dirty tricks for the nine months he spent in prison. He talks to the Daily Beast’s Paul Alexander about clearing his name, anger at Rove—and mopping prison floors. Plus, read Scott Horton’s piece on What the Justice Department is Hiding.

Wednesday, December 3, 2008

As predicted here at DemNationUSA, the Bush-PELOSI-Paulson BAILOUTS are NOTHING BUT THIEVERY for America's PARASITE BANKERS.....

Illustrating yet again how incompetent, servile, and CORRUPT the Democratic "leadership" of House Speaker NANCY PELOSI is, this week's GAO report details what anyone with an IQ north of a pea already knew: THAT THERE IS absolutely NO OVERSIGHT of the BILLIONS upon TRILLIONS of taxpayer dollars that President Bush's Secretary of Treasury Hank Paulson is dishing out to his friends and cronies on Wall St.

"BAILOUTS"
that are being treated as NOTHING but __BILLION DOLLAR GOLDEN PARACHUTES__ for financial corporations and their insanely greedy, corrupt, and ammoral executives - blatant, outright THIEVERY of taxpayer millions that are NOT DOING ONE THING to STIMULATE or BOLSTER the CONSUMER BASE of the American economy, but instead are being used as ONE LAST "TRICKLE DOWN" goldmine from the Bush administration to REWARD those bankers for THEIR FAILURES and GREED!

That Hank Paulson would use taxpayer billions as so much Christmas candy to BOLSTER HIS OWN PORTFOLIO (at Goldman-Sachs) and the portfolios of his financial friends is of course no great surprise; Witness, a previous Bush administration "MADE MAN," "VICEROY" of the US occupation in Iraq L. Paul Bremer, 'DISTRIBUTED' NINE BILLION DOLLARS of Iraq government monies the Bush-Cheney administration had released to Bremer's tender mercies within the first weeks of the US occupation of Baghdad in 2003... and within a few weeks, Bremer would report to the US press & (insanely corrupt) US Congress that HE HAD NO IDEA where all those NINE BILLION DOLLARS had gone!
No, in this case the amazing thing is that SPEAKER PELOSI is so conflicted, complicit, incompetent, servile, and timid, THAT SHE DOESN'T REALIZE that SHE, herself, SIGNED HER SIGNATURE as Democratic majority party leader (Speaker of the House, to be precise) - to the Bush/Pelosi/Paulson $700 BILLION dollar financial bailouts in September - and that therefore SHE, and her "Democratic" Party, are now PARTY TO THAT GRAND THEFT of BILLIONS of taxpayer dollars with NOTHING to show for it!

OK, "with nothing to show for it" is not how the Democratic "leadership" sees it: As they see it, they STAVED OFF the COMPLETE ECONOMIC COLLAPSE of American markets for several vital weeks, allowing for the conduct of sane and orderly elections where Democrats were able to roll up big gains in the House, Senate, and win a majority of national votes for the US presidency.

OK, Speaker Pelosi, NOW THE PARTY IS OVER, and SOMEONE has to pay for all those goodies purchased on America's credit card for that party!

And the BILLIONS upon TRILLIONS being poured into the PRIVATE accounts of Treasury Secretary Paulson's friends & cronies on Wall St. are NOT MAKING CREDIT EASIER for American consumers to obtain, quite the opposite: those TRILLIONS of dollars are BEING ADDED TO THE AMERICAN private and government DEFICITS, and as with INFLATIONARY money creation everywhere, will actually MAKE AFFORDABLE CREDIT _HARDER_ to obtain for American working-class consumers!

Clearly, the Speaker and her Congressional "leaders" ARE STILL WEDDED to the BIG BUSINESS, PRO-WAR, pro- DEBT, DEFICITS, TAX-CUTS, and LOW-WAGES lobbyists who encouraged and sided with the Bush White House these past 8 miserable years.

Already, the American news/media are IGNORING the Bush White House. IN THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE they will START BLAMING the PELOSI DEMOCRATS for the Bush administration's INSANE LEVELS OF DEBT, GREED, and CORRUPTION, and because the Speaker of the House is SAYING NOTHING about that RAMPANT CRAFT and CORRUPTION, for the first time in 8 years the Right-Wing media will be "right" (as in "correct") about THE DEMOCRAT's RESPONSIBILITY for the GUTTED, LOOTED TREASURY!

Friday, November 28, 2008

Rachel Maddow Show: Bush/Paulson/PELOSI BAILOUTS now cost $4.3 TRILLION - MORE THAN WARS, SPACE RACE, Marshall Plan, & Louisiana Purchase, COMBINED!


NANCY PELOSI and the ___DEMOCRAT___ 110th Congress, now bear JUST AS MUCH RESPONSIBILITY for the HORRIFIC, TAXPAYER FUNDED DEBACLE of the Bush/Pelosi/Paulson economic crisis and "bailout plan" as President Bush, Treasury Secretary Paulson, and other administration officials and Republican legislators do - because, almost overnight, the Pelosi/Paulson bailouts have ADDED TREMENDOUSLY to the US government DEFICITS that (along with financial markets _'DEREGULATION'_ helped CREATE THIS economic CRISIS and FINANCIAL NIGHTMARE IN THE FIRST PLACE!
And PELOSI, REID, and the Democrats ____ARE DOING NOTHING_____ to oversee Paulson's distribution of those billions - BILLIONS going ENTIRELY TO PAD THE PORTFOLIOS of Paulson's fat-cat bankers, brokers, & cronies on Wall St!

Sunday, November 23, 2008

Pelosi & Obama play "Hear No Evil, See No Evil, SPEAK No Evil" About Paulson's TRILLION DOLLAR Rip-off "BAILOUTS" - DOOMING Economic recovery...!

IN case no one is paying attention, almost 2 months after the Nancy Pelosi Congress & Harry Reid Senate authorized $700 billion, SEVEN-HUNDRED BILLION DOLLARS to be used to rescue the US economy under the tender mercies of Bush Secretary of Treasury Paulson.... Paulson has used those BILLIONS of dollars EXCLUSIVELY to PROP UP THE BIGGEST, WEALTHIEST BANKERS on Wall Stree.... TO THE TOTAL EXCLUSION OF ALL OTHER segments of the US Economy!

Mr. Paulson's Rip-Off is SO BLATANT, that after dishing out at least $250 BILLION to his friends and cronies in _selected_ firms on Wall St., Mr. Paulson has harrumphed "I'm NOT GOING TO SPEND ANY MORE of the authorized billions to rescue the economy UNTIL THE DEMOCRATS TAKE CONTROL of the Treasury (Executive branch) - on January 20th, 2009".... IMPLYING that he won't dip into those billions for his banker friends in the next 8 weeks!
Anyone believe _that_ story, we've got a bridge to sell ya!

But more to the point, the AMERICAN ECONOMY CONTINUES TO BURN, as Paulson does EXACTLY NOTHING to buttress ANY OTHER SEGMENT of the economy!
There are even reports that CHINA AUTOMAKERS may buy out GENERAL MOTORS, which would be an obvious "duh" solution for a nation (China) that is awash in billions of American dollars (from the combined US, PRIVATE Trade Deficits, AND the huge US _PUBLIC_ NATIONAL GOVERNMENT DEFICITS to foreign nations), but with nothing really worth buying with all those dollars.
http://www.agoracosmopolitan.com/home/Frontpage/2008/11/19/02867.html

The point here is, that AMERICAN VOTERS voted TO GIVE DEMOCRATS CONTROL over the US government budgets and economy (and, indeed, in presidential election, the entire executive branch of the US government), so IF Obama, Pelosi, Reid, Hoyer & co. DO NOTHING to STOP Paulson overt's LOOTING of thost BAILOUT BILLIONS, the American public will have every right to paint the BUSH-2 RECESSION as the "DEMOCRATS RECESSION" - just as Timmy McVeigh and the "hate government!" militias in the mid 1990s painted the BUSH-1 RECESSION as the fault, NOT of the _DEREGULATION_ of the Savings & Loan industry under Reagan and Bush-1, but as the fault of "TAX AND SPEND, Big Government REGULATING DEMOCRATS" !!

#1. Democrat "leadership" may give a FREE PASS to Tres.Sec. Paulson's LOOT & PLUNDER of Bailout Billions... but MARKET INVESTORS don't!

- "Market Shedding 1,000 points Nov. 18 & 19 was a market Vote of 'NO CONFIDENCE!' in Paulson's administration of bailout billions
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-fiderer/the-simple-arithmetic-of_b_145389.html
#2. Krugman: Lame-duck administration (especially Paulson at Treasury) FIDDLE while MARKETS BURN - while sitting on a $700 billion pot of gold specifically intended to rescue the ailing economy!
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/21/opinion/21krugman.html

#3. "DEMOCRAT" economists Summers, Rubin, WERE IN CAHOOTS with Phil Gramm and Alan Greenspan's "ENRON LOOPHOLE" and the even larger, far more destructive "Commodity Futures Modernization Act," "which banned any effective government regulation of the newly unleashed derivatives market" Scheer, http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20081118_change_we_can_bank_on/

#4. _REPUBLICAN_ Senator James Inhofe (possibly the most reactionary, right-wing member in all of Congress) confirms: (paraphrasing) 'Treasury Secretary Paulson INVOKED THE SPECTER of MARTIAL LAW, MASSIVE UNEMPLOYMENT, and a new DEPRESSION' to spook the Pelosi-Reid Congress into authorizing the $700 billion bailout of Wall Street in September, following the Dow Jones average spectacular, one-day, 777 point plummet that wiped out trillions of dollars of investor and pension savings.
While this particular article may be a tad on the "conspiracy" side of the story (we believe that Paulson did indeed invoke the specter of imposing MARTIAL LAW in trying to convince Speaker Pelosi to fund his bailout requests, see our previous posts), it DOES SERVE TO HIGHLIGHT _HOW LITTLE_ PAULSON has done FOR THE ECONOMY since then..!
http://www.prisonplanet.com/paulson-was-behind-bailout-martial-law-threat.html

#5. Foreclosures - THE ROOT of the current economic crisis - IGNORED by Paulson and the Bush White House, even as they pour taxpayer BILLIONS into rescuing the very banks that wrote those bad loans, encouraged appraisers to OVER-VALUE those homes, and are doing next to NOTHING to help homeowners retain those homes!!
http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSN1825605820081118

#6. Naomi Klein sums the above up in Plain English:
"Wall Street's Bailout is a Trillion-Dollar Crime Scene -- Why Aren't the Dems Doing Something About It?", The Nation magazine, 14 Nov. 2008:
http://www.alternet.org/workplace/107000/?page=entire

#7. Ravi Batra, reknown economist and author of "GREENSPAN's FRAUD," predicts MARKET COLLAPSE under Bush/Paulson's tender mercies.... in AUGUST of 2008!

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

PAUL KRUGMAN takes uber-Righty GEORGE WILL to woodshed, delivers THRASHING over Will LYING about causes of the GREAT DEPRESSION...



Poor Paul Krugman! The "Failed Currencies" expert hired by Arthur ("punk") Sulzberger to be the New York Times' in-house "Economic Hit Man" proved not only to be an expert on failed economies (failed currencies of course = failed economies), but turned out to be that rare bird, an ECONOMIST with a CONSCIENCE.
Over coming years Krugman would prove to be "right", as in "correct", far more often than his more well-known NYT columnist stablemates - dreadfully wrong men like WILLIAM "GIVE FALLUJAH a taste of (Hitler's) LIDICE Treatment!" SAFIRE, or THOMAS "The world is FLAT - "AMERICAN WORKERS should settle for THE SAME WAGES as HITLER's CONCENTRATION CAMP LABORERS", er, "CHINESE convict/slave-labor factories" FRIDMAN, or David "I LOVE REPUBLICAN ECONOMICS" BROOKS (just don't try to nail him on exactly why) - and no matter how prescient Krugman's predictions were, they were always buried deep in the editorial section of the Times once or twice a week.

Krugman had to suffer the "dissing" of having his own paper, the NEW YORK SLIMES, IGNORE his own rock-solid recommendations in the way the Times covered the war costs and economic stories of the past 8 years of the Bush-Cheney dreadful administration, every month providing new confirmation that Krugman was correct, and the Times' Neo-Con "TAX-CUTS FOR the WEALTHY in TIME OF WAR" war-pigs were dreadfully wrong.

Well, now that we have reached "DOW 8,000 and falling like a rock," the final weeks of 2008, and ALL of Krugman's PREDICTIONS have been BORN OUT to be true.

Sometimes satisfaction is such a fleeting creature - in the above video, Krugman DEMOLISHES liar GEORGE WILL's right-wing Talking Points that somehow "LIBERAL" economics CAUSED THE GREAT DEPRESSION.

Krugman takes WILL TO THE WOODSHED, explaining - "ECONOMIC POLICY has NOTHING to do with investment - IF you ALREADY HAVE 20 factories that are empty, laid off, and unproductive, BECAUSE THERE IS NO CONSUMER BUYING to stimilate new investment or production for those existing factories." DUH!

BUT George Will's above TEXT BOOK EXAMPLE of Right-Wing "EXPERTS" PULLING "FACTS" OUT OF THEIR ASS, is EXACTLY how the WASHINGTON POST, NEW YORK TIMES, and other "major media" LYING WHORES have been RUINING the American news industry over the past 20 years, substituting their OWN DERANGED TALKING POINTS for genuine economic & social facts.

REAL "facts" such as GEORGE W. BUSH _WRECKED_ the TEXAS STATE BUDGET SURPLUS left to him by previous Democratic Governor ANN RICHARDS. Not only did Bush WRECK Texas' DEMOCRATIC BUDGET SURPLUS back in the late 1990s, but he DID IT WHILE _SLASHING_ SOCIAL PROGRAMS _PROVEN_ to save state taxpayers in the long run!

Programs like pre-school, after-school, and health-care programs for Texas' poor and minority schoolchildren that kept those children IN SCHOOL, performing at a higher level, with higher GRADUATION RATES, OUT OF the Juvenile Criminal System, and OUT of EMERGENCY ROOMS - THOSE are the programs the ENTITLED SON of a former president SLASHED for Texas citizens in need, ON BEHALF OF THE INSANELY GREEDY Texas upper-crust right-wing millionaires!

THE RIGHT-WING press/media ARE CHRONIC LAIRS with an ANTI-AMERICAN AGENDA: an agenda that favors ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION and OUTSOURCING of US JOBS, to create a virtual WAGE-SLAVE servile UNDERCLASS here in America, so the Right-Wing Crime-lords like GEORGE WILL and DAVID BRODER and WILLIAM SAFIRE can "HARRUMPH!" as THEIR ECONOMIC and tax POLICIES TURN AMERICA into a THIRD-WORLD, GREAT DEPRESSION, poverty-wages NATION.

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

The Bush-Peolis-Paulson "BAILOUT" CONTINUES to hand out BILLIONS of taxpayer dollars, to Paulson's cronies on Wall St....

In our previous rants on the abject refusal of coardly Senate Democrats to stand for ANY MODICUM of rule by law and financial accountability for the Bush-Cheney administration (and all their corporate/media/"Justice" minions who infest the US government), we only obliquely mentioned ENRON ACCOUNTING, and then as a NOW FORGOTTEN EXAMPLE of how then "Democrat" Senator Joe Lieberman QUASHED an energetic, determined, and effective ENRON INVESTIGATION in his committee, which investigation Senate Majority "Leader" TOM DASCHLE _STUPIDLY_ placed in Lieberman's committee. Lieberman's REFUSAL to INVESTIGATE ENRON's SERIAL FRAUDS - both in company accounting standards (Profit/Loss statements & other financial data, accurate valuation of subsidiaries, debts, accounts, etc.) and in the company's attempts to EXTORT CONSUMERS during the West Coast energy crisis of 2003 - simply illustrated HOW CORRUPT the DC Democrats were, prefering to take their pay and voters for granted, rather than STAND UP FOR American workers, consumers, investors, and pensioners RIPPED OFF by "ENRON ACCOUNTING" under company Chairman KEN LAY and CEO JEFF SKILLING - both close friends and supporters of the Bush-Cheney 2000 presidential campaign.

Today, the MASSIVE FRAUD PERPETRATED ON THE AMERICAN PUBLIC by ENRON's EXECUTIVES in penny-ante stuff, compared to the BUSH-PELOSI-PAULSON $700 billion _SEVEN HUNDRED BILLION_ of taxpayer dollars that Treasury Secretary Paulson is CURRENTLY HANDING OUT TO HIS FRIENDS ON WALL St. just as fast as his assistants can lay out the checks on his desk to sign.

AND, OF COURSE, the COWARDLY, CRAVEN "inside DC" SENATORS are _NOWHERE IN SIGHT_ providing OVERSIGHT to Paulson's "GET OUT OF DEBT FREE" cards to his friends and cronies at JPM, Goldman-Sachs, and other administration-friendly banking or brokerage houses.

AND IT ISN'T REALLY EVEN TAXPAYER DOLLARS - it is A TRILLION DOLLARS OF NEW DEBT, PILED ON the EXISTING massive TRILLIONS of DOLLARS of Bush-Cheney DEFICITS, that the cowering DC Democrats PRETEND NOT TO NOTICE.

"Populist" writer and economics advisor David Sirota has today's latest sad update on how THE COWARDLY DC DEMOCRATS, have been ENABLING the Bush administration and Paulson Dept. of Treasury, to INFLICT ANOTHER HALF-TRILLION DOLLARS of DEFICITS on teh American economy, America's working families be damned.

__ENRON ACCOUNTING, DEFICT SPENDING, and TRILLION-DOLLAR DEFICITS are TEH SIGNATURE AGENDA of the Bush-Cheney administration, and the COWARDLY Senate Democrats can DO NOTHING, BUT SIGN NEW BLANCK CHECKS on the taxpayer treasury for Bush & Paulson to dole out to their friends!

Stripping Paulson of His Remaining Power & Money
by CAF STAF, David Sirota
November 17th, 2008 -
http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2008114717/stripping-paulson-his-remaining-power-money

COWARDLY 'Democrat' Senators REWARD REPUBLICAN Senator Joe Lieberman - WITH CONTINUED CHAIR of VITAL Senate Committee...

Well, today, Tuesday Nov. 18, 2008, exactly two weeks after the presidential elections that found millions of Americans voting DEMOCRATIC to get a CHANGE, a BREAK from the radical, reactionary right-wing policies of the Bush-Republican administration - the COWARDLY, CRAVEN, CORRUPT Democrat senators VOTED TO KEEP Joe Lieberman as CHAIRMAN of the vital GOVERNMENT AFFAIRS committee.

Of course, saying a senate committee "IS VITAL" is a clear exaggeration": THERE ARE _NO_ VITAL Senate commmittees, THE ENTIRE US SENATE, Democrats & Republicans alike, is nothing but a RUBBER STAMP for the WAR PARTY, the OIL PARTY, the BIG BANKERS Party, and the Big Media "WE DON'T NEED NO STINKING democracy" party.

The COWARDLY Democrat Senators are INCAPABLE of DEMANDING that the BILLIONS of dollars of US taxpayer funds appropriated for the RECONSTRUCTION OF NEW ORLEANS after Hurricane Katrina ACTUALLY BE SPENT TO RECONSTRUCT New Orleans.

The COWARDLY Democrat Senators are INCAPABLE of OVERSEEING the VAST CORRUPTION - near GESTAPO powers of search, arrest, seizure, and indefinite incarceration - of the Bush administration's Department of "justice" in the infinitely open-ended "war on terror."

The COWARDLY Democrat Senators are INCAPABLE of OVERSEEING the "Justice Department" for VAST, CRIMINAL CORRUPTION and FRAUDULENT, PERJUROUS PROSECUTIONS - even when the victims are DEMOCRATIC elected officials!

The COWARDLY Senate Democrats CAN'T EVEN DEMAND a thorough, active, and energetic INVSTIGATION into ANTHRAX ATTACKS ON THEIR OWN MEMBERS.

And, as said above, the COWARDLY, CRAVEN, CORRUPT DC Democrat Senators are ENTIRELY INCAPABLE of BREAKING THEIR ADDICTION to Confederate-war style poltics: Addiction to the politics of CHEAP LABOR, LOW WAGES, RAPE of PENSION FUNDS and entire markets, the LOOTING of the US Treasury on behalf of the "owner class" elite...

The Cowering DC Democrat Senators CAN'T EVEN PROTECT US INDUSTRY, as DUBAI - constrained by the medieval culture that denies women freedoms taken for granted here in America - TAKES THE LEAD in SOLAR PANEL PRODUCTION.

The TREACHEROUS BETRAYALS of the _DEMOCRATS_ in the US Senate....

The cowardly, craven, arrogant, elitist Senators of the Democrat Party are set to DO IT AGAIN - piss on tens of thousands upon millions of Democratic voters, donors, activists, and hard-working Americans who want some ALTERNATIVE to the radical Right-Wing neo-slavery agenda of the reactionary Republicans - so it is time to list a quick snapshot of those _DEMOCRATIC Senator's_ world-class BETRAYALS:

#1. After getting up in the well of the US Senate to lecture Americans and the world on the dangers of the Bush administration's unconstitutional abuses of power, especially re NO-OVERSIGHT SPYING on American citizens, Senator Robert Byrd... proceeded to vote FOR the Bush administration's UNCONSTITUTIONAL, no oversight, no restrictions UNLIMITED SURVEILLANCE program. THAT is what Democrat Senators do.

#2. In 2000, MILLIONS of Democratic voters turned out to give Dem. presidential candidate (then) Vice President Al Gore, and Dem. VP candidate Senator Joe Lieberman, an OVERWHELMING 500,000+ vote MAJORITY in the national POPULAR VOTE. And despite Republican and media efforts to the contrary, the CLEAR MAJORITY of voters IN FLORIDA, voted for the Gore-Lieberman ticket. DESPITE all those MILLIONS of Americans GIVING the (very lame) Democratic ticket a CLEAR MAJORITY, the COWARDLY, CRAVEN, CORRUPT, self-centered Senate Democrats REFUSED to give - NOT EVEN ONE craven senator - a SINGLE VOTE of support to the BLACK CONGRESSIONAL CAUCUS demands for a SIMPLE Congressional INVESTIGATION into MASSIVE voter disenfranchisement of Black & minority voters in Florida by Jeb Bush/Katherine Harris Republican administration. Since the majority of Democratic senators have for decades depended on BLACK VOTERS to win in close races against Republican opponents, THIS WAS A BETRAYAL of HISTORIC, even BIBLICAL proportions.
The craven, lazy, stupid, cowering Democrat senators PREFERRED TO TAKE THEIR MARCHING ORDERS from the REPUBLICAN PARTY, and corrupt corporate media, than do what they were elected to do: REPRESENT THEIR VOTERS.

#3. The craven, stupid, cowering Democrat Senators REPEATED their cowering tactics, REFUSING to hold the incoming President Bush to his "MORE BI-PARTISAN TONE IN WASHINGTON" campaign pledge: Promises made at EACH AND EVERY Campaign stop of Bush's 2000 presidential campaign, the Democrats were too lazy, stupid, and incompetent to dust off video of those repeated promises, and HOLD THE president who had just STOLEN his election (via partisan Supreme Court ruling) TO HIS OWN DAMN PROMISES. The cowering Senate Democrats once again demonstrating their preference to TAKE ORDERS from REPUBLICANS and the corporate media, to standing up for their own voters. The Democrats would not use a FILIBUSTER to BLOCK Bush partisan nominees, for years to come.

#4. The new president Bush spent the entire spring and summer of 2001 DERIDING DEMOCRATS as the party of "BIG GOVERNMENT SPENDING", incompetence, and corruption - even as he took MORE VACATIONS than ANY previous president. Again, the Democrats in Washington took NO EFFORTS to DEMAND that the corporate media hold the president to his own campaign rhetoric.

#5. The Bush-Cheney White House would DO NOTHING - they could not point to ONE SINGLE STEP THEY TOOK to DETER or make more difficult the 9-11 TERRORIST HIJACKINGS of September 11th, 2001. That incredible record of Bush administration gross incompetence and Dereliction of Duty would take several years to emerge, but while President Bush stood on the tomb, the rubble of the World Trade Center towers' wreckage in New York city, he would pledge to Americans that "I'm going to get Osama bin Laden DEAD OR ALIVE."
Yet within 6 short months of Bush's "get 'em dead or alive!" pledge, the President would say at a White House conference, "I AM NOT THAT CONCERNED ABOUT HIM [Osama bin Laden] ANY MORE"... a comment which Democrat 'leaders' had neither the means nor the inclination to express outrage over.

#6. Perhaps part of the reason the Democrat Senators were wary of speaking out against Bush administration conduct of the "war on terror" within the USA (as the Bush administration conducted it) and in Afghanistan, was because the Democrat senators themselves were SHELL-SHOCKED, victims of an ANTHRAX LETTER ATTACK on _DEMOCRATIC ONLY_ offices in the US senate, by letters filled with deadly anthrax spores that had been "weaponized" in a fine powder inserted into envelopes carrying those letters. While immediate media and administration reporting suggested that it was _ARAB TERRORISTS_ who had launched the deadly Anthrax terror attacks, it swiftly became known that the letters were mailed from US mailboxes - but despite the nation's TRILLION DOLLAR defense/intel/counter-terror/law-enforcement institutions, it quickly became evident that the FBI was botching their investigation, and had not even made a VIDEO search and seizure of all the bank, business and other security videos on those streets leading to the mailboxes from which the deadly letters had been mailed. This initial INCOMPETENCE of the Anthrax investigation was reinforced when it was learned that the ANTHRAX SPORES used in the deadly letters was NOT from foreign laboratory cultures... but had been determined, by genetic testing, to come from AMERICA's OWN BIO-WAR COMMUNITY, specifically the US Army's AMRID bio-war facility at Fort Dietrich, Maryland.
STILL the Democrats in Congress were in NO WAY able to demand or insist that the administration step up the BASIC COMPETENCE of its anthrax investigations, first blaming one scientist (Mark Hatfield), then another. The majority of critics looking at the FBI's investigation of the Anthrax attacks - ON DEMOCRAT ONLY Congressmen (when true terrorists could have SHUT DOWN the White House and Pentagon by mailing unmarked letters there) - see the FBI's "CLOSED CASE" ruling on the Anthrax investigation after the suicide of the 2nd scientist suspect to be, at best, a rush to conclusion, at worst an obstruction of basic, competent findings.

#7. The ANTHRAX ATTACKS on THE US CONGRESS - NOT, as we have just pointed out, on the White House or Defense Department, as you would expect a foreign terrorist to do - followed shortly after the 9-11 terrorist hijackings. Within weeks of the Bush administration's undeclared war and invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration would "OUT" AN ENTIRE UNDERCOVER CIA Operation, in order to SMEAR a prominent and well known war critic, former Ambassador Joe Wilson. Even preliminary investigations would reveal that Chicago Sun-Times columnist BOB NOVAK had OBTAINED HIS INFORMATION on the "undercover spy" status of Valerie Plame Wilson - war critic Joe Wilson's wife - after discussions with the Bush White House shortly after the US invasion of Iraq in March 2003. But as further details of the White House's efforts to DISCLOSE Ms. Wilson's CIA employment to the Washington press were reported, the Congressional Democrats made next to NO effort to DEMAND ANSWERS from the illegal outing. Eventually, responding to demands from the CIA itself that a criminal investigation be run, the last vestiges of an Independent Justice Department empowered an Independent Prosecutor's office to investigate the "outing", of not just an individual CIA operative, but her ENTIRE COVER ORGANIZATION, and thus EVERY CIA officer and foreign "asset" (hired local spy) who had ever been connected to that undercover operation. The campaign of Democrat Senator John Kerry REFUSED to use the issue of the "Plame outing" as a campaign issue in the 2004 presidential race; Senator Kerry REFUSING to even DEMAND A STRAIGHT ANSWER from President Bush if he had been aware of the operation within his White House to "out" Ms. Plame to the DC press corps; Kerry REFUSING to make President Bush hold to his previous pledge to FIRE and PROSECUTE anyone from within his administration who should be found to have participated in such an "outing". In fact, the Kerry administration DID NOTHING to HOLD THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION ACCOUNTABLE for ANY of its gross errors and abuses of power to that date, Senator Kerry preferring, instead of pounding on the theme of Bush administration incompetence and corruption in war contracts profiteering, to present himself as a heroic figure who would somehow "save" America. Compared to Senator Kerry's incredibly lame campaign, a SQUANDERING of the opportunity to HOLD PRESIDENT BUSH ACCOUNTABLE for his pledges, promises, and incompetence to that date, Kerry's ABANDONING Democratic voters in Ohio - almost CERTAINLY ROBBED of their popular vote majority for Kerry in that crucial swing state - is just another in the INCOMPETENT BETRAYALS by Senator Kerry's pompous, take-no-stand campaign.

#8. Shortly after the 2004 presidential election (almost certainly put President Bush back in the White House with ANOTHER STOLEN VOTE count), the Independent Prosecutor into the "Plame outing" investigation WAS ABLE TO WIN a felony _PERJURY_ and _OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE_ ____CONVICTION____ against Vice President Cheney's own Chief of Staff, Washington DC 'super-lawyer' Lewis "Scooter" Libby. AT NO TIME did the DEMOCRAT SENATORS _follow up_ on this INCREDIBLY TOUGH prosecution, by an Independent Prosecutor SINGLE HANDED LY TAKING ON _the most powerful White House_ since at least the WWII years - a tough prosecution that obtained the PERJURY and OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE CONVICTION, against the sitting Vice President's own Chief of Staff, a verdict obtained by a prosecutor against a jury that openly acknowledged sympathy for the defendant, a jury and trial where everyone understood that Mr. Libby was playing 'the good soldier,' the FALL GUY, for his _SUPERIORS_ at the White House. Since Mr. Libby had concurrently been SENIOR ADVISOR TO THE PRESIDENT (while he was the Vice President's CoS), the list of his "SUPERIORS" at the White House was a short one. Namely the President, the Vice President, the President's Chief of Staff (at the time of Libby's employment Andrew Card) and the other power-figure in the Bush-Cheney White House, Bush's Political Affairs Director, Karl Rove. Yet despite the CRIMINAL CONVICTIONS of Mr. Libby, and the CLEAR TRAIL that his conduct was part of a wider White House operation to, first "out" the identity of Ms. Plame, and then to COVER UP and OBSTRUCT that Justice Department investigation into that illegal "outing", STILL the DC Democrats MADE NO EFFORT to see that JUSTICE was followed through - not even basic Congressional investigations after Democrats won control of both the House and Senate majorities in the November 2006 mid-term elections.

#9. Immediately after the 2006 mid-term elections, the Bush White House and their Attorney General, ALBERTO GONZALES, set about to PURGE the Department of Justice of ALL prosecutors, US Attorneys, and other personnel who WOULD NOT PARTICIPATE in PARTISAN PROSECUTIONS of non-Republican candidates in crucial swing-state elections. This scandal would come to be called "PURGE-GATE."
The Democrats DID hold hearings in to Purge-gate, but even though Attorney General Alberto Gonzales COMMITTED PERJURY under oath (at one point testifying that he had gone to visit then Attorney General John Ashcroft, alone in a hospital room late at night under narcotic sedation while recovering from surgery) NOT to discuss the White House's UNLIMITED SURVEILLANCE program... but three sentences later, Attorney General Gonzales was forced to admit that he was carrying papers in his hand on that very Unlimited Surveillance program for the sedated Ashcroft to sign) - the Democrats NEVER HELD THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION ACCOUNTABLE for the illegal "PURGING" of the Justice Department, and the far more illegal PARTISAN, perjurous PROSECUTIONS, and attempted (or ordered) prosecutions, of Democratic candidates, officials, or elections activists. Indeed, the most prominent victim of the PURJUROUS prosecutions of Democratic officials was ALABAMA Democratic GOVERNOR DON SIEGELMAN, likely ROBBED of his winning 2002 re-election bid by Karl Rove's Republican operatives in Alabama elections offices, and then, for having the temerity to immediately run for election all over again despite his "losing" the 2002 election, Mr. Seigelman found himself the target of a PARTISAN PROSECUTION that eventually found him guilt of... putting a campaign supporter and donor on a government health care oversight panel? BY THAT STANDARD, EVERY APPOINTEE of the ENTIRE Bush administration would be GUILTY OF CRIMINAL CORRUPTION, because the Bush administration judged its appointees SOLELY by the amounts of cash that they donated to Republican campaigns!

#10. A similar betrayal of impartial justice in America, the DC Democrats, once they became THE MAJORITY of BOTH HOUSES OF CONGRESS starting in January, 2006, WOULD DO NOTHING over the coming 2 years to ASSURE American voters nationwide that THEIR VOTES WERE COUNTED FAIRLY and accurately.

The legacy of this Democrat 'leadership' INCOMPETENCE (if not dereliction of duty to insure that THE CORE of American democracy was not "FIXED" by corrupt elections officials or privately owned machines) - would be seen in the 2008 elections, where TWO WEEKS after the November 4th voting, ALASKA residents would STILL NOT KNOW the winner of their close senate race, a shameful standard also seen in Minnesota, and elsewhere in down-ticket races. BY COMPARISON, both CANADA and INDIA hold elections, the count of which is SUPERVISED by OBSERVERS from ALL parties, and the results of which are known - on the evening of the elections.

The above is only a quick, snap-shot examination of the tactics and techniques that DEMOCRAT SENATORS USE to UNDERMINE he will of Democratic voters... a betrayal of American voters that will see the Democrats LEAVING SENATOR LEIBERMAN IN CHARGE of the crucial GOVERNMENT OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE in the US Senate, even though Senator Leiberman's QUASHING of an EFFECTIVE, ENERGETIC, and determined ENRON INVESTIGATION in that very committee led to the Democrats' own drubbing in the 2002 mid-term elections, Lieberman (and thereby the Democrats) FAILING to LINK the Bush White House to ENRON's SERIAL CORRUPTION and market frauds -

- A FAILURE to PROSECUTE FRAUD, and thus PROTECT American workers, investors, consumers, pensioners, and taxpayers, by Lieberman's committee, that would see the Democrats LOSE the majority they were handed by REPUBLICAN Senator Jim Jeffords shortly before the 2002 mid-term elections, a LOSS of Majority that would soon see former Senate Majority Leader TOM DASCHLE lose his re-election to the Senate despite his holding that crucial, powerful position on behalf of the constituents of his small state.

Monday, November 17, 2008

Cowardly 'Democrat' Senators SET TO STAB Democratic VOTERS in the BACK - YET AGAIN! - and LEAVE JOE LIEBERMAN as CHAIR of the GOVT. AFFAIRS COMMITTEE-

THE COWARDLY, CRAVEN, INCOMPETENT, Harry Reid Senate Democrats ARE OUT TO DO IT AGAIN: SNATCH DEFEAT from the jaws of Victory, and ENABLE the REACTIONARY RIGHT-WING WAR-MONGERING, TREASURY-LOOTING, GESTAPO WARTIME POWERS (unlimited spying, unlimited torture, no oversight of executive branch) agenda...

See our previous posts for the DIRE CONSEQUENCES of LEAVING THE LIEBERMAN VIPER... IN CHARGE OF A CRUCIAL Democrat Party COMMITTEE... in the process, PISSING ON tens of thousands upon MILLIONS of DEMOCRATIC VOTERS...

Saturday, November 15, 2008

Maddow to President-elect Obama & Dem Leaders: "Leave Sen Lieberman IN HIS COMMITTEE CHAIR, you'll DESERVE his backstabbing Witch-hunt Investigations"

(Sorry, Rachel, for the unflattering lead frame from this video..
we here at d.n.usa have no video-editing skills!)


Thank god for YouTube!
The worst aspect of America's "uber-consumer, material girl, conspicuous consumption, instant gratification" culture, is that no matter how many THOUSANDS of facts you can compile - common sense facts, for example, that while "red state" Right-Wing Republican politicians such as Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin moan and cry about "SOCIALIZED big government Democrat policies," it is RURAL, "RED" Republican STATES that are nine times out of ten NET FEDERAL TAX-DOLLAR RECIPIENTS - that is, the more they bleat about "Moral Values", the more likely they are to be WELFARE QUEENS! -

- Despite the abundance of thousands of such FACTS that the ENTIRE Right-Wing agenda is made up of LIES and DISTORTIONS (see Al Franken demolish Rush Limbaugh's use of made-up statistics on minimum wage) - UNLESS AMERICANS SEE SOMETHING ON THEIR TV, or SPLASHED ALL OVER THE FRONT-PAGES (and _only_ the front pages) of their newsstand newspaper - it SIMPLY DOESN'T COUNT!

SUCH is the case with JOE LIEBERMAN, the hypocrite & treacherous former 2000 Democratic vice presidential candidate who today chairs the Democrat majority Senate Government Affairs Oversight Committee. Not only has Senator Lieberman treacherously run against and defeated DEMOCRATIC Party Senate candidate Ned Lamont for his current job (if you or I did that, it would mean that we were no longer a part of the Democratic Party, and would not be eligible to CHAIR a COMMITTEE in the Democratic Senate caucus), but Mr. Lieberman has spent the entire past years of 2007 and 2008 up to the November 4 elections CAMPAIGNING FOR John McCain, the _REPUBLICAN_ candidate for president!

Fortunately, MSNBC news/commentary show host RACHEL MADDOW deconstructs Lieberman's amazing, arrogant, entitled gall and in-your-face treachery, and because of the miracle of YouTube, we can show you Mr. Lieberman's treacherous DUPLICITY, IN HIS OWN WORDS.

More importantly, Ms. Maddow has a message for President-Elect Barack Obama (paraphrasing):
"President-elect Obama, IF you talk the Democrat senate leadership in to leaving Lieberman astride his COMMITTEE CHAIRMANSHIP, you can BE ASSURED that Lieberman will at some time in the future _START INVESTIGATING YOUR ADMINISTRATION."_


This is a GUARANTEED OUTCOME, because the "independent" Senator from Connecticut has already demonstrated that, ON THE IMPORTANT ISSUES OF WAR, Republican DEFICIT SPENDING, DEREGULATION, insider crony corruption, and even criminal misconduct from within the offices of government, HE IS SOLIDLY IN THE POCKET of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, John McCain, and the Neo-Con "GUT AMERICA's SOCIAL PROGRAMS, RUN UP GOVERNMENT DEFICTS by GIVING TAX CUTS TO THE WEALTHY" agenda.

(Which, Democrat and corporate media FAILURE to highlight it or not, has been THE BEDROCK FOUNDATION and SIGNATURE AGENDA of the Bush/Cheney/GOP reactionary, radical right-wing since at least the years that George W. Bush was governor of Texas, see Molly Ivins & Lou Dubose's book, "Shrub."
Written before the 2000 election, "Shrub" highlighted how Texas Gov. Bush had SQUANDERED the TEXAS STATE BUDGET SURPLUS left to him by his predecessor, Democratic Governor Ann Richards. Not only did Gov. Bush and his Republicans turn Texas' budget surplus TO ASHES, but they did it.... while SLASHING existing social programs that had PAID FOR THEMSELVES, for example pre-school and after-school education programs PROVEN to IMPROVE the GRADUATION RATES, and REDUCE the DROP-OUT and JUVENILE CRIME RATES, of Texas school children and teenagers!)

In short, out of a misguided sense of bipartisanship (or even "compassion") for the treacherous and very dangerous Senator Joe Lieberman, President-elect Obama WOULD BE NURSING A VIPER in his own robes if Lieberman were to continue on as the very powerful CHAIRMAN of the Senate Government Affairs Committee.

-------------------------------------

Fortunately, the great investigative reporter ROBERT PARRY (who, against considerable "major media" (corporate) obstructionist efforts of his editors, publishers, and the DC "conventional wisdom" news networks, broke the Iran-Contra scandal to America's and the Congress' attention) has the details of President Clinton practically sobbing to anyone who would listen to him, about RELENTLESS REPUBLICAN INVESTIGATIONS in to HIS administration, early in 1993 and 1994 - INVESTIGATIONS BROUGHT ABOUT, Parry informs us, because Clinton SWEPT ON-GOING CRIMINAL INVESTIGATIONS into REPUBLICAN abuses of power from the Bush-1/Reagan years UNDER THE RUG and right out of official Washington - thereby ALLOWING the Republicans and their right-wing media to GO FROM THE DEFENSIVE, TO THE OFFENSIVE, against the very Democratic president who had virtually (by dismissing those on-going investigations) given them sweeping pardons!
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2007/100307.html

note 2: By 1995, the Right-Wing media's ability to blame THE BUSH-1 RECESSION - brought about by Reagan/Bush-1 DEFICIT SPENDING and DEREGULATION (and connected insider crony LOOTING of America's Savings & Loans) was in full roar. Timmy McVeigh, an honorably (but involuntarily) discharged US Army Gulf War combat decorated veteran, started plotting to blow up US federal government targets, because after his involuntary discharge, he was UNABLE TO FIND A JOB in up-state New York... and rather than blame the DEREGULATION/DEFICIT/insider-looting policies of the Republican administration, Right-Wing HATE RADIO talk show hosts, such as G. Gordon Liddy, Oliver North, and others, WERE BLAMING "TAX & SPEND DEMOCRATS" in general, and the CLINTON ADMINISTRATION IN PARTICULAR, for the MASSIVE UNEMPLOYMENT, and gut-wrenching FEDERAL GOVERNMENT DEFICITS of the BUSh-1 RECESSION. The BUSH-1 RECESSION was still in effect THREE FULL YEARS into the Clinton 1st-term White House, when Tim McVeigh's right-wing militia bomb went off, killing 168 government workers children at the Murrah federal government building in downtown Oklahmoa City on April 19th, 1995.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oklahoma_City_bombing
William Edelen, cited in the "HATE RADIO" link above, distills this serious and dangerous threat posed to the Democratic administration and American people alike, should the Democratic senators GIVE Senator Lieberman A SOAP-BOX to WHIP UP Right-Wing faux Outrage over the coming years:
http://secweb.infidels.org/?kiosk=articles&id=710

"Any person with an I.Q. above three can figure out that this kind of violent talk, with God and the bible thrown in, is the fertilizer for the next Oklahoma bombing, abortion clinic murder, Columbine massacre, Jewish center bloodbath, or a Matthew Shepherd being tied to a fence on a freezing night and beaten to death."

Monday, November 10, 2008

President-elect Obama's BIGGEST CHALLENGE: Right-Wing HATE RADIO in the Heartland...


This is not the "Red States" election map from the 2004 Kerry campaign - it is the "RED COUNTIES" election map from the 2008 Obama victory this past November 4th!
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/2008/
It is indeed true that the above election cartograph/map is NOT weighted for population or electoral votes... in fact, those weighted maps (and the far more familiar state results map, for the vast majority of "winner take all" states) are at the same web-site) but that RED, RED, RED COUNTIES MAP conveys an extremely important lesson for the Obama campaign and Democrats in the coming years: THOSE RURAL COUNTIES are DOMINATED by RIGHT-WING media, specifically TV and Radio, and especially RIGHT-WING HATE RADIO.

No matter the Obama victory landslide and popular vote margin: RIGHT-WING HATE-RADIO was able to IMPEACH a SITTING US PRESIDENT (Bill Clinton); ROB the sitting Vice President and popular-vote winner of the 2000 election of his electoral victory (Al Gore robbed by massive disenfranchisement in Florida); a sitting Democratic governor (Don Siegelman of Alabama) not only ROBBED of his election win, but then prosecuted and IMPRISONED for - putting a supporter on a government commission?? - THE POWER of the RIGHT-WING MEDIA to DRAG DOWN DEMOCRATS should NEVER BE UNDERESTIMATED, they have the SCALPS of a DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENT, a Democratic VICE-PRESIDENT, a DEMOCRATIC GOVERNOR, and at least TWO Democratic Senators (Vietnam War combat Veteran Max Cleland in Georgia in 2002, and Vietnam veteran Tom Daschle in South Dakota in 2004) to their credit.
EVEN MORE AMAZING, the RURAL STATES are 9 times out of 10 (only one or two exceptions) NET federal TAX RECIPIENTS - BUT the message of "DEMOCRATS" in genearl, and "OBAMA IS A SOCIALIST!" in particular, are VERY POWERFUL THEMES being POUNDED by the Right-Wing media - DESPITE that NET TAX DOLLAR RECIPIENT status of the RURAL, "red" states!

Indeed - ALASKA, home to Gov. Sarah Palin, the MOST VOCIFEROUS DEMAGOGUE of the "Democrats are SOCIALISTS!" message this year - is THE MOST SOCIALIZED, SUBSIDIZED STATE IN AMERICA!

This amazing factoid - that the RIGHT-WING MEDIA is EXCELLENT at INVERTING REALITY, ACCUSING Democrats of "being Socialists" WHILE BENEFITING from SOCIALIZED REDISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH from urban to rural counties - WILL RESULT in the "DEATH OF 1,000 CUTS" to the incoming Obama administration, IF they take NO MEASURES to address that Right-Wing, rural media (radio & TV) juggernaut.

NO MATTER HOW WELL the Obama campaign ADDRESSES OTHER ISSUES - ENERGY, THE ECONOMY, the war-on-terror, health care, education, national infrastructure, etc. - the RIGHT-WING MEDIA in the "rural red states" is ALMOST UNOPPOSED and will ROB the credit for any Obama admin. successes, and AMPLIFY the BLAME for any shortcomings - The DEATH OF 1,000 CUTS, just ask Al Gore, Bill Clinton, Max Cleland, Don Siegelman, or dozens of other Democratic candidates and leaders.

Sunday, November 9, 2008

CNN live countdown to Obama victory, Grant Park, Chicago

CBS anchor Katie Couric declares Election Win for Obama, Nov. 4, 2008...

An excellent vignette from CBS election night reporting; the moment at 11 pm Eastern time, when the polls closed at 8 pm Pacific time, when CBS news and other networks were able to call ("project") an ELECTION VICTORY for the Obama campaign, based on Obama winning Pennsylvania and Ohio hours earlier, and clearly dominating in the California, Washington, Oregon, and Hawaii voting to that hour.
As Bob Scheiffer explains, within his own lifetime he had attended all segregated schools, and by the time he graduated from high school, he had never been at school with a Black student!


Keith Olbermann, who did so much to FOCUS America's media attention on the absurdities, hypocrisies, and race-baiting of the McCain campaign, Olbermann's voice cracks with emotion as he calls the Election Victory for Obama:

Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Barack Obama WINS ELECTION 2008! Will be America's 44th PRESIDENT!


Senator Obama's PRESIDENT-ELECT VICTORY SPEECH! -
(OOPS! This is Obama's Jan. 2008 IOWA, first-campaign-victory speech.
We apologize for the error, and will post the Nov. 4 Chicago speech as soon as it is available... but as Obama says, "THIS is the moment when it ALL BEGAN!"

Sunday, November 2, 2008

As good as it is, the Democratic Barack Obama campaign COULD HAVE SHARPENED the expose of Republican misrule & McCain campaign...

AS GOOD AS IT IS, Obama's campaign has fallen WAY SHORT of HIGHLIGHTING JUST HOW ATROCIOUS the Republican agenda & campaigns are....!!

#1 REPUBS WANT TO KILL Soc Security!!
Americans LOVE Social Security, Right-Wing FEARMONGERING over its imminent demise to the contrary. And AMERICANS SAVED Social Security from "Privatization" - almost DESPITE the cowering Congressional Democrat's lame support.

WHY The Obama campaign has gone SOFT on this issue is... AMAZING?! THERE ARE one THOUSAND video clips of Bush, Cheney, McCain, and other Republicans TRYING TO DESTROY Social Security, by trying to PRIVATIZE it, which would have DONE THE SAME DAMN THINGS to SocSecurity that WRECKED the Stock Market, forcing "Heck'uva job Bushie" to RUN TO CONGRESS _BEGGING_ for ONE TRILLION TAX-PAYER DOLLARS to BAIL OUT Bush, Paulson and (former Halliburton CEO) Cheney's CRONIES on Wall St....
(Don't forget, Mr. Cheney's entire fortune is based on his Halliburton STOCK OPTIONS.)


#2. POUNDING McCain's "NO!" votes AGAINST VETERANS CARE, and SPECIFICALLY SAY that McCain is a DAMN HYPOCRITE to say "I SUPPORT THE TROOPS!" when he MOST CERTAINLY DOES NOT. this is a _major shortcoming_ of all the Democrats, failing to POUND this issue - down McCain's and Republican party throats.

#3. Obama campaign failure to POUND McCain's REJECTION OF FARM BILL votes down McCain's ENTITLED, multi-millionaire, hypocrite throat...

AMERICANS _LOVE_ SOCIALISM in Agricultural policy.. it is called our CHEAP FOOD national policy, and EVERYONE loves it - consumers in cities AND rural states (who benefit from low priced food even if their region has a drought, for example), small family farmers, and even LARGE CORPORATE FARMS, - EVERYONE LOVES America's CHEAP FOOD SOCIALIZED, SUBSIDIZED AGRICULTURE, but of course Republicans love the benefit of CHEAP ag, but vote against it in cases of idiots like Bush & McCain, and CAMPAIGN AGAINST it in terms of PRETENDING that "SUBSIDIES" don't equal "Socialism."

#4. Obama campaign has FAILED to POUND Bush, McCain, GOP attempts to REDUCE REGULATION on POISONS IN OUR WATER SUPPLY.
MERCURY!
ARSENIC!
LEAD !!
Bush, Cheney, McCain, and the ENTIRE GOP crew, want to allow FAR HIGHER LIMITS on these TOXIC substances in our water supply and/or air we breathe - substances KNOWN TO RETARD BRAIN DEVELOPMENT IN BABIES. (Not to mention substances known to contribute to pre-natal and poor pregnancy conditions - the Alpha & Omega of Right-Wing claims to "moral superiority" based on their anti-abortion stances.)

#5. Health Care... Obama campaign COULD HAVE _POUNDED_ McCain on Health care, but it is TOUGH to go after a former POW on all the MILLIONS of dollars his health care have cost... and more specifically, how NO, NO, NO Private Insurer would EVER have taken McCain's insurance, had he not had GOVERNMENT insurance, and/or been WEALTHY.

BUT the Obama campaign COULD have POUNDED the theme that AMERICA's HEALTH CARE COSTS have TRIPLED these last few years under Bush, Cheney, McCain, and Republican misrule.

#6. GEORGE W. BUSH LOVES ARAB OIL DICATORS !!!
can anyone IMAGINE the ads the GOP, Bush, Cheney, McCain, and Repubs would be running, IF Barack Obama had been KISSING ARAB DICTATORS who fund WAHABI, "HATE THE INDOLENT WEST!" DICTATORS ???!!!

There are HUNDREDS of Pictures of Bush holding hands, kissing, and LAUGHING with Arab OIL DICTATORS who can EXECUTE WOMEN for having an affair !!


Oh yeah..
#7. Bush & cheney TRYING TO SELL US PORTS to the VERY ARAB OIL DICTATORS who FUND WAHABI "HATE THE WEST!" schools in Pakistan, Indonesia, and throughout the Muslim World !!

Though FAR from complete - we haven't included DICK CHENEY's HALLIBURTON PORTFOLIO GOING UP with every Billion-dollar NO BID CONTRACT he gave his "former" country; or Bush's corrupt Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson using ONE TRILLION TAXPAYER DOLLARS to bail out HIS OWN $500 million portfolio AT GOLDMAN-SACHS, or how Bush, Cheney, McCain, & crew have HELPED CORPORATIONS LOOT worker PENSION FUNDS (which was EXACTLY the theme of the _1980s_ movie "Wall Street" with Michael Douglas and Martin Sheen)...

Saturday, November 1, 2008

At long last! A HACKER, VOTE-STEALING voting-machine IS IMPOUNDED by a state elections supervisor.

http://coloradoindependent.com/13187/adams-county-quarantines-machine-that-switched-candidates-vote
Electronic-voting fraud activists BradBlog.com posts a story written in the Colorado Independent newspaper that a county clerk in Colorado has finally done the right thing for the voters by removing a touch-screen voting machine from service, and quarantining it, after it was discovered to be flipping votes from one candidate to another. The failed machine in this case was a Diebold Accu-Vote, a frequent flipper.

As reported by the Colorado Independent (Hat-tip VoterAction.org)...

An electronic voting machine in Adams County repeatedly failed to accept a vote for a Democratic state Senate candidate — instead registering the vote for her Republican opponent — at an early voting site last week and has been removed from service, the Aurora Sentinel reports Wednesday. Adams County Clerk and Recorder Karen Long told the newspaper the error doesn’t reflect wider problems in the county’s voting systems, but the candidate said the incident could lead to a lawsuit.

“I always just trusted the machines, and it opened my eyes,” said state Rep. Mary Hodge. “The way it works now, I’m told … is that those votes throw it to Mr. Hadfield that we’ll probably have a lawsuit and a court decision. We’ll have to wait and see.”

Hodge, the Democratic nominee, faces Republican Robert John Hadfield in the race to represent state Senate District 25.
...
“I have quarantined the machine,” Long told the newspaper. “It’s removed and it’s sealed up and it’s in a bag.” She said she is awaiting instructions from the secretary of state’s office.


Long is to be lauded for being the first election official in the country so far during the general election (that we're aware of) to have taken the correct action in such a vote-flipping case. And now that Hodge's eyes are "opened" we hope that both she and her Republican opponent, Hadfield will stand up for their voters by signing the StandingForVoters.org "no concessions" pledge immediately!

Late last night VelvetRevolution.us (a non-partisan, non-profit election watchdog co-founded by The BRAD BLOG) issued a press release calling on election officials to not recalibrate systems mid-election, but rather remove and impound them, and offer voters paper ballots as needed instead. The complete press release is posted at the end of this article.

Sunday, October 19, 2008

West Virginia voters complain of 'incidents' where VOTE MACHINES SWITCHED THEIR VOTES from Dem. to Repub. candidates...



PELOSI's DISGRACE... despite TWO FULL YEARS of a DEMOCRATIC CONGRESSIONAL MAJORITY - WITH the added bonus of a Democrat SENATE majority - Speaker Pelosi and her senior 'Democratic' Party "leaders" have, in abjectly cowardly fashion, DONE ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to GUARANTEE THE SANCTITY of the vote....

...to GUARANTEE that in this first decade of the 21st century American democracy is based and grounded in a FULL and FAIR VOTE where every voter has a right to cast a vote free of fear and intimidation.

Where every voter HAS A RIGHT to EXPECT that their vote is counted fully and fairly, and NOT swiped by computerized voting tabulation THAT WOULD NOT PASS _ANY_ Financial insitution's MINIMUM levels of data security.


Almost TWO YEARS after Speaker Nancy Pelosi took up the Speaker's gavel in January 2001, Democratic voters have NO such assurance - thanks to the ABJECT, CRIMINAL NEGLIGENCE, if not CRIMINAL COMPLICITY with the pro-war lobby to not make a fuss about Republican vote stealing - of Speaker Pelosi and her leadership.

The Agenda of Speaker Pelosi and the corrupt, complicit, inside-DC "Democrat" Party is clear: AMERICANS are entitled to genuine democratic governance ONLY when Right-Wing Republicans SO FOUL UP the Ameican economy, energy policy, foreign policy, and the fabric of American society itself, that an upwelling of popular resentment REJECTS the "Washington DC Conventional wisdom" that has been the Speaker's dominant agenda thus far.

=========================================================

Some Early W.Va. Voters Angry Over Switched Votes

Jackson County touch-screens switched votes, 3 residents say
At least three early voters in Jackson County had a hard time voting for candidates they want to win.
By Paul J. Nyden, Staff writer
October 18, 2008
http://www.wvgazette.com/News/200810170676
<< At least three early voters in Jackson County had a hard time voting for candidates they want to win.

Virginia Matheney and Calvin Thomas said touch-screen machines in the county clerk's office in Ripley kept SWITCHING THEIR VOTES FROM DEMOCRATIC TO REPUBLICAN CANDIDATES.

"When I touched the screen for Barack Obama, the check mark moved from his box to the box indicating a vote for John McCain," said Matheney, who lives in Kenna.

When she reported the problem, she said, the poll worker in charge "responded that everything was all right. It was just that the screen was sensitive and I was touching the screen too hard. She instructed me to use only my fingernail."

Even after she began using her fingernail, Matheney said, the problem persisted.

When she tried to vote for candidates running for two open seats on the Supreme Court, the electronic machine canceled her second vote twice.

On her third try, Matheney managed to cast votes for both Menis Ketchum and Margaret Workman, Democratic candidates for the two open seats.

Calvin Thomas, 81, who retired from Kaiser Aluminum in Ravenswood in 1983 and now lives in Ripley, experienced the same problem.

"When I pushed Obama, it jumped to McCain. When I went down to governor's office and punched [Gov. Joe] Manchin, it went to the other dude. When I went to Karen Facemyer [the incumbent Republican state senator], I pushed the Democrat, but it jumped again.

"The rest of them were OK, but the machine sent my votes for those top three offices from the Democrat to the Republican," Thomas said.

"When I hollered about that, the girl who worked there said, 'Push it again.' I pushed Obama again and it stayed there. Then, the machine did the same thing for other candidates.

"Why didn't she [the polling clerk] tell me before I even used the machine that might happen? And how many people, especially my age, didn't notice that? >>

Thursday, October 16, 2008

John McCain's BULLYING and POLITICAL COWARDICE.. ENABLED by Speaker NANCY PELOSI's LIES and Political Cowardice.....

Former DIEBOLD technician CHRISTOPHER HOOD explains the EASE with which then DIEBOLD PRESIDENT BOB UROSEVICH had his technicians install "software patches" into critical vote-counting machines on the eve of the 2002 and 2004 elections:

AS we contemplate the possibility that Democrats might take enough Republican "red state" senate seats this 2007 election to gain a FILIBUSTER-PROOF majority in the US Senate, we hate to sound like back-biting complainers, but THE ENTIRE OUTCOME of ELECTION 2008 DEPENDS ON ELECTRONIC VOTING MACHINES that ARE KNOWN to be vulnerable to HACKING and VOTE-RIGGING... but after TWO YEARS of having a virtual dictatorial congressional majority in the US House (a "dictatorial" winner-take-all majority that is the inherent nature of the US House of Representatives), SPEAKER NANCY PELOSI has DONE EXACTLY NOTHING to address this critical issue at the core of America's democracy.

And, Ms. Pelosi's PRETENDED IGNORANCE to the contrary, THIS IS _NOT_ A COMPLICATED ISSUE: Using PROPRIETARY SOFTWARE designed, built, tested, run, AND ADMINISTERED by REPUBLICAN-OWNED vote-machine companies, IT IS FAR TOO EASY to SWIPE THOUSANDS, or TENS OF THOUSANDS, of votes, AND LEAVE NO TRACE.

We here at DemNationUSA have a cell-phone with a built-in 1.3 megapixel camera, with a 1 gigabyte SD card solid-state "flash" memory card that was purchased separately and installed in the camera's easy, slide-in SD card port. That SD card carries approximately 1,000 1-megapixel photographs. IF someone were to leave such a cell phone sitting on a bar while went to dance for a few minutes, it only take another person at the bar two or three moments - a few seconds - to flip the phone's SD port cover open with a fingernail, depress the SD card one-tenth of an inch, have it pop out and remove it. IF the camera's owner came back to the bar, they would find the cell phone sitting right where they left it. It would still function perfectly, it would still have all its phone numbers saved in the camera's built-in memory, and the camera function of the cell-phone would still work, saving a limited number of photos to the phone's same internal memory. But the 1,000 photos and sound-clips you had saved to the phone previously , would now be gone... VANISHED.

Computer memories work the exact same way, and of course you do not have to physically remove a computer's hard-drive or flash ("chip," or "solid state") memory to wipe out ALL the files stored in that memory... you can simply ERASE those stored files by deleting them, overwriting them, or re-formating the memory.

THAT is EXACTLY what DIEBOLD, ES&S, and SEQUOIA voting computers have done in the past 4 national - presidential and congressional - elections. In EVERY instance of THOSUANDS of "DISAPPEARED" votes and SWITCHED vote outcomes, the outcomes have ALWAYS BENEFITTED Republican candidates. The statistical likelihood that these suspicious voting outcomes would ALWAY benefit one part - the Republican Party - with NOT ONE INSTANCE where a Republican candidate has ever had any reason to file complaint about vote-swiping vote tallies benefiting Democratic candidates, is statistically a huge number, a MILLION-to-ONE _against_ the propabability that this was a random outcome.

The above three paragraphs are EXACTLY THE IMPROBABLE, million-to-one against voting outcomes that SPEAKER PELOSI, Senate Majority 'leader' HARRY REID, and the ENTIRE 'Democratic' "Leadership" PRETEND NOT TO NOTICE!

And now, on the eve of election 2008, we have DOZENS of WITNESSES - SIGNED witnesses UNDER OATH - coming out of the past 8 years of election rigging, testifying to what they know and have seen about those RIGGED, MANIPULATED, and ALTERED voting outcomes.... AND STILL Speaker Pelos and the 'Democratic' "leadership" PRETEND NOT TO NOTICE!

This is "LEADERSHIP" by INCOMPETENCE! This is VOTE-RIGGING on a MASSIVE scale!
This is the "Democrat" Party _ENABLING_ the Republican Party to ASSAULT and DISENFRANCHISE _TENS OF THOUSANDS_ of Democratic voters!

The above process of COMPUTUERIZED ELECTION-RIGGING was EASY to explain using the cell-phone camera & SD card analogy. Of course a truly determined hacker could not merely steal you cell phone's SD chip, but they could REPLACE it with another SD card, one that had 1,000 OTHER photos on it. Heck, if that replaced memory-chip card had child pornography photos on it, you could now be ARRESTED and SENT TO PRISON merely for being in possession of your own camera-phone!

The process of SECURING digital, computerized election results is ALMOST AS EASY TO EXPLAIN. For ALL of us ASSUME that there are STRINGENT STANDARDS of COMPUTER NETWORK SECURITY on our BANKING and FINANCIAL accounts. And indeed THERE ARE stringent, relentlessly enforced, relentlessly investigated standards for NETWORK SECURITY in the banking and financial industries, because, as is portrayed in James Bond and other drama and crime movies, there is a huge temptation for criminals to swipe thousands, millions, or tens-of-millions of dollars from one account, and transfer them to another account where the counterfeiter or hacker can withdraw the funds.

AT NO TIME have America's VOTING MACHINE COMPANIES _EVER_ HAD TO DEMONSTRATE NETWORK SECURITY and resistance to hackers that financial networks have to demonstrate every day.

Indeed, there is an every day precedent for the need to safeguard against SOFTWARE HACKING that would enable altered election outcomes: America's GAMBLING INDUSTRY. State regulators in Nevada and other states that permit slot machines exercise RIGOROUS MACHINE CODE INSPECTIONS of EACH and EVERY slot machine, because of the inherent temptation to INSERT A FEW LINES OF CODE INTO THE computerized gambling machines, would would allow the software hacker to __SKIM__ a portion of the machine's proceeds to an invisible file.

This process or technology is NOT "theoretical" - already state regulators in Nevada, going over machine code (software) for computerized slot machines, HAVE found lines of code inserted that DIVERT some portion of some machine's take, or allowed the hacker to operate the machine in a manner which would trigger a winning pull of the handle.

Below, more video testimony of the EASE with which America's CRITICAL VOTING MACHINES can be HACKED by the companies that produce those machines... WITH ALMOST NO government oversight, and certainlY NO government oversight of the machine's PROPRIETARY, "private" machine code.

The Democrats have been completely behind the eight-ball of a full decade of the world's rush in to the COMPUTERIZED, PC, tele-COMMUNICATIONS, and electronic VOTING era. CRITICAL ELECTIONS at the mercy of private, Republican affiliated companies is NO SAFEGUARD on the right to vote which undergirds America's democracy.
=================================================
Stephen Spoonamore testifies to the EASE with which COMPUTERIZED VOTING TOTALS can be HACKED, and winning voter margins CAN BE SWITCHED to the LOSING candidate, stealing elections from the winning candidate and their voters.



More on Mr. Spoonamores NETWORK SECURITY GROSS VULNERABILITY of America's proprietary voting machines TO HACKING and company VOTE-RIGGING....
http://www.alternet.org/democracy/94895/republican_computer_security_expert_explains_why_electronic_voting_can_never_be_trusted/

Monday, October 13, 2008

McCain's INSIDIOUS Campaign links Obama with terrorists - for Obama sitting on CHARITY FOUNDATION BOARD selected by REPUBLICAN Walter Annenberg!


LINKS to the ANNENBERG FOUNDATION CHALLENGE for Chicago:
Annenberg Foundation http://www.annenbergfoundation.org/news/news_show.htm?doc_id=702786
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Annenberg_Challenge
CBS News: "FALSE REPORTS by McCAIN Campaign" re William Ayers role in ANNENBERG FOUNDATION education charity http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/10/13/eveningnews/realitycheck/main4518056.shtml
“The idea that the Annenberg Challenge was somehow the extension of the Weather Underground of the 1960’s, that is just one of the most lunatic contentions I can imagine,” says Mike Flannery, political editor at the CBS Chicago affiliate WBBM who has covered Chicago politics for 35 years.

Saturday, October 11, 2008

Anti-democratic nature of US capitalism is being exposed

"STATE INTERVENTION is a regular feature of STATE CAPITALISM, although the scale today is unusual"...... the ANTI-DEMOCRATIC nature of US CAPITALISM IS BEING EXPOSED.

According to at least one study, _One out of 5 companies on the Fortune 100_ WOULD NOT HAVE SURVIVED but for GOVERNMENT INTERVENTION, and many of the rest have benefitted from government subsidies and other forms OF SOCIALIZED TRANSFER OF WEALTH FROM Taxpayers TO those companies...
Noam Chomsky steps up to the plate for the TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS OF INDEBTEDNESS that Bush-Cheney and Corporate America have put every working American family in...
$480,000, FOUR HUNDRED AND EIGHTY THOUSAND DOLLARS of TAXPAYER DEBT per working American household, according to former US Comptroller Walker last night in his video-cast comments on the Phil Maher show.

THE AMERICAN MEDIA, and Democratic Party, ARE CRIMINALLY NEGLIGENT for NOT POINTING OUT THIS POISONING, STIFFLING DEBT to the American people, especially as this Economic crisis empowers President Bush and his administration to DELIVER TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS of taxpayer money TO THE VERY FINANCIAL INSITUTIONS that CREATED this economic nightmare.

=======================================

Anti-democratic nature of US capitalism is being exposed

by NOAM CHOMSKYB
Irish Times, Friday, October 10, 2008
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2008/1010/1223560345968.html

Bretton Woods was the system of global financial management set up at the end of the second World War to ensure the interests of capital did not smother wider social concerns in post-war democracies. It was hated by the US neoliberals - the very people who created the banking crisis writes Noam Chomsky

THE SIMULTANEOUS unfolding of the US presidential campaign and unravelling of the financial markets presents one of those occasions where the political and economic systems starkly reveal their nature.

Passion about the campaign may not be universally shared but almost everybody can feel the anxiety from the foreclosure of a million homes, and concerns about jobs, savings and healthcare at risk.

The initial Bush proposals to deal with the crisis so reeked of totalitarianism that they were quickly modified. Under intense lobbyist pressure, they were reshaped as "a clear win for the largest institutions in the system . . . a way of dumping assets without having to fail or close", as described by James Rickards, who negotiated the federal bailout for the hedge fund Long Term Capital Management in 1998, reminding us that we are treading familiar turf. The immediate origins of the current meltdown lie in the collapse of the housing bubble supervised by Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, which sustained the struggling economy through the Bush years by debt-based consumer spending along with borrowing from abroad. But the roots are deeper. In part they lie in the triumph of financial liberalisation in the past 30 years - that is, freeing the markets as much as possible from government regulation.

These steps predictably increased the frequency and depth of severe reversals, which now threaten to bring about the worst crisis since the Great Depression.

Also predictably, the narrow sectors that reaped enormous profits from liberalisation are calling for massive state intervention to rescue collapsing financial institutions.

Such interventionism is a regular feature of state capitalism, though the scale today is unusual. A study by international economists Winfried Ruigrok and Rob van Tulder 15 years ago found that at least 20 companies in the Fortune 100 would not have survived if they had not been saved by their respective governments, and that many of the rest gained substantially by demanding that governments "socialise their losses," as in today's taxpayer-financed bailout. Such government intervention "has been the rule rather than the exception over the past two centuries", they conclude.

In a functioning democratic society, a political campaign would address such fundamental issues, looking into root causes and cures, and proposing the means by which people suffering the consequences can take effective control.

The financial market "underprices risk" and is "systematically inefficient", as economists John Eatwell and Lance Taylor wrote a decade ago, warning of the extreme dangers of financial liberalisation and reviewing the substantial costs already incurred - and proposing solutions, which have been ignored. One factor is failure to calculate the costs to those who do not participate in transactions. These "externalities" can be huge. Ignoring systemic risk leads to more risk-taking than would take place in an efficient economy, even by the narrowest measures.

The task of financial institutions is to take risks and, if well-managed, to ensure that potential losses to themselves will be covered. The emphasis is on "to themselves". Under state capitalist rules, it is not their business to consider the cost to others - the "externalities" of decent survival - if their practices lead to financial crisis, as they regularly do.

Financial liberalisation has effects well beyond the economy. It has long been understood that it is a powerful weapon against democracy. Free capital movement creates what some have called a "virtual parliament" of investors and lenders, who closely monitor government programmes and "vote" against them if they are considered irrational: for the benefit of people, rather than concentrated private power.

Investors and lenders can "vote" by capital flight, attacks on currencies and other devices offered by financial liberalisation. That is one reason why the Bretton Woods system established by the United States and Britain after the second World War instituted capital controls and regulated currencies.*

The Great Depression and the war had aroused powerful radical democratic currents, ranging from the anti-fascist resistance to working class organisation. These pressures made it necessary to permit social democratic policies. The Bretton Woods system was designed in part to create a space for government action responding to public will - for some measure of democracy.

John Maynard Keynes, the British negotiator, considered the most important achievement of Bretton Woods to be the establishment of the right of governments to restrict capital movement.

In dramatic contrast, in the neoliberal phase after the breakdown of the Bretton Woods system in the 1970s, the US treasury now regards free capital mobility as a "fundamental right", unlike such alleged "rights" as those guaranteed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: health, education, decent employment, security and other rights that the Reagan and Bush administrations have dismissed as "letters to Santa Claus", "preposterous", mere "myths".

In earlier years, the public had not been much of a problem. The reasons are reviewed by Barry Eichengreen in his standard scholarly history of the international monetary system. He explains that in the 19th century, governments had not yet been "politicised by universal male suffrage and the rise of trade unionism and parliamentary labour parties". Therefore, the severe costs imposed by the virtual parliament could be transferred to the general population.

But with the radicalisation of the general public during the Great Depression and the anti-fascist war, that luxury was no longer available to private power and wealth. Hence in the Bretton Woods system, "limits on capital mobility substituted for limits on democracy as a source of insulation from market pressures".

The obvious corollary is that after the dismantling of the postwar system, democracy is restricted. It has therefore become necessary to control and marginalise the public in some fashion, processes particularly evident in the more business-run societies like the United States. The management of electoral extravaganzas by the public relations industry is one illustration.

"Politics is the shadow cast on society by big business," concluded America's leading 20th century social philosopher John Dewey, and will remain so as long as power resides in "business for private profit through private control of banking, land, industry, reinforced by command of the press, press agents and other means of publicity and propaganda".

The United States effectively has a one-party system, the business party, with two factions, Republicans and Democrats. There are differences between them. In his study Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age, Larry Bartels shows that during the past six decades "real incomes of middle-class families have grown twice as fast under Democrats as they have under Republicans, while the real incomes of working-poor families have grown six times as fast under Democrats as they have under Republicans".

Differences can be detected in the current election as well. Voters should consider them, but without illusions about the political parties, and with the recognition that consistently over the centuries, progressive legislation and social welfare have been won by popular struggles, not gifts from above.

Those struggles follow a cycle of success and setback. They must be waged every day, not just once every four years, always with the goal of creating a genuinely responsive democratic society, from the voting booth to the workplace.

* The Bretton Woods system of global financial management was created by 730 delegates from all 44 Allied second World War nations who attended a UN-hosted Monetary and Financial Conference at the Mount Washington Hotel in Bretton Woods in New Hampshire in 1944.

Bretton Woods, which collapsed in 1971, was the system of rules, institutions, and procedures that regulated the international monetary system, under which were set up the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) (now one of five institutions in the World Bank Group) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which came into effect in 1945.

The chief feature of Bretton Woods was an obligation for each country to adopt a monetary policy that maintained the exchange rate of its currency within a fixed value.

The system collapsed when the US suspended convertibility from dollars to gold. This created the unique situation whereby the US dollar became the "reserve currency" for the other countries within Bretton Woods.

Noam Chomsky is professor emeritus of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His writings on linguistics and politics have just been collected in The Essential Chomsky , edited by Anthony Arnove, from the New Press. This article appeared first in the New York Times

© 2008 The Irish Times

Friday, October 10, 2008

"Democrat" Speaker Nancy Pelosi uses TAXPAYER DOLLARS... TO FUND the REPUBLICAN PARTY...

We here at DemNationUSA predicted this would happen: SPEAKER NANCY PELOSI's OVERSIGHT of the crimes, corruptions, abuses of power, and VAST FINANCIAL CORRUPTION taking place under the Bush adminsitration these past 8 years (past 2 years since Rep. Pelosi became the Speaker of the House) HAS BEEN SO WEAK... that IMMEDIATELY upon Pelosi's 110th Congress GIVING A BLANK CHECK to the "Masters of Universe" in billion-dollar Wall St. banking houses, would lead directly to - - - - THOSE BANKERS RECEIVING BILLION-DOLLAR US TAXPAYER BAILOUTS using tens to millions of dollars TO PROP UP THE REPUBLICAN PARTY.

hat tip to SeeTheForest -
http://www.seeingtheforest.com/archives/2008/10/first_bailout_r.htm
==================================
Sources: NRCC Secures $8 Million Loan for Final Election Push

By David M. Drucker
Roll Call Staff
October 8, 2008, 11:54 a.m.
http://www.rollcall.com/news/29150-1.html

The National Republican Congressional Committee, trailing its Democratic counterpart considerably in cash on hand, has secured an $8 million loan to spend on House races during the last few weeks of the campaign, according to sources.

George Will, Sarah Palin, John McCain, Republican Party.. TRY TO BLAME Bush's MARKET MELTDOWNS on FANNIE MAE and Minority (Black) home owners....

BRAVO! For David Fiderer - he is DECONSTRUCTING the attempts by George Will and the Right-Wing Media - at the urging of John McCain, Sarah Palin, and the Republican Party - TO BLAME THE _ENTIRE_ US and world financial economic crisis on MINORITIES (BLACK AMERICANS) in general, and FANNIE MAE in particular.

We here at DemocraticNationUSA have _NO_ doubt that 'Democratic' Party leaders have been in the middle of the DEREGULATION agenda, and have not stood up forcefully enough to the climate of greed and lack of oversight on Wall St. and in the financial markets.

BUT TO BLAME THIS _ENTIRE_ ECONOMIC CRISIS on Fannie Mae is patently absurd - especially since THE REPUBLICAN PARTY WAS IN CONTROL of BOTH the White House AND CONGRESS from 2002 to 2006. As recently as JULY 2006, PRESIDENT Bush's OWN Secretary of Treasury QUASHED RUMORS that Fannie Mae needed a bailout, Treasury Secretary Paulson flatly asserting that there would be no bailout for Fannie Mae.

BUT - IF Sec. Paulson had to ACKNOWLEDGE the POTENTIAL need for a bailout at Fannie Mae, SHOULD HE NOT HAVE ADDRESSED a BUDDING CRISIS THERE long before September and October 2008?????

===================================

Wagging the Dog With Fannie Mae: Republicans Explain the Financial Crisis With
Racist Mythology
David Fiderer
Posted October 9, 2008
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-fiderer/wagging-the-dog-with-fann_b_133388.html

"Is this video a lie?" wrote someone in response to my last piece on HuffPost.

No, "lie" is an inadequate description. I uploaded the video link, seen by two million people before me, and gasped at the artful perversion of history. It was like a post-millennium version of The Birth of a Nation. In that silent film classic, a pivotal scene is prefaced by the title card:

"AN HISTORICAL FACSIMILE of the State House of Representatives of South Carolina as it was in 1870."
Then we see black legislators in session, drinking whiskey, eating chicken, resting bare feet on their desks, and leering after white women. As J. Lapper wrote:

"This is also the first instance of "bait and switch" in the film. Prior to this, as noted above, [Director D.W.] Griffith used 'historical facsimiles' to give the film an air of historical accuracy...The subversive logic being, 'Earlier we saw facsimiles of Sherman's March, Lee's surrender and Lincoln's assassination. We know those are true. This must be too.'"
The updated "historical facsimile" from NakedEmperorNews.com, is just as dishonest and just as racially incendiary, since it has the semblance of reasonableness and reality. The hero at the Congressional hearings is the courtly southern gentleman, Republican Richard Baker, whose calls for regulatory oversight are drowned out by the shiftless uncouth blacks: Maxine Waters, Gregory Meeks, Lacy Clay, Artur Davis and Fannie Mae CEO Franklin Raines, aided by one white guy, Barney Frank.

[Update at 9:00 am October 10, 2008: Yesterday John McCain echoed this video by saying, "Democrat members of Congress fought against reform and it is a matter of record and hearings that they said everything was fine." Barney Frank was one of the "willing co-conspirators."]

To appreciate the mendacity of the video, you need to understand the history of what happened at Fannie Mae, and the causes of the current financial crisis. You'd be hard pressed to get that knowledge from mainstream media, whose piecemeal reporting comes across like blind men describing an elephant.

Into this void of understanding, Republicans have sought to absolve themselves of blame with a racist mythology that has gone viral. George Will, a chief proponent, neatly summarized the narrative on This Week last Sunday:

"In fact, much of the crisis we're in today is because the government set out to fiddle the market. That is, we had regulation in effect with legislation that would criminalize as racism and discrimination if you didn't lend to nonproductive borrowers. We had Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac existed to rig the housing market because the market would not have put people in homes they could not have afforded."
Will's narrative is about as accurate as D.W. Griffith's portrayal of Reconstruction. Fox News invokes it constantly. The ABC commentator invokes four different phenomena, none of which he understands:

1. The financial problems of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac,
2. The mission of Fannie and Freddie,
3. The Community Reinvestment Act,
4. The greater mortgage crisis.

To refute the lie, we need to address these issues one at a time.

What does the video have to do with Fannie Mae's collapse? Nothing.

The best way to understand what happened is to start off with an understanding of when things happened. Therein lies the bait-and-switch. The financial problems at Fannie Mae began after these Congressional hearings, which were conducted a few weeks before the November 2004 elections. Fannie Mae's troubles were caused by Daniel Mudd, who reversed the policies of his predecessor, Franklin Raines, when he became CEO in December 2004. The New York Times laid it out very clearly:

"[B]y the time Mr. Mudd became Fannie's chief executive in 2004, his company was under siege. Competitors were snatching lucrative parts of its business. Congress was demanding that Mr. Mudd help steer more loans to low-income borrowers. Lenders were threatening to sell directly to Wall Street unless Fannie bought a bigger chunk of their riskiest loans.

"So Mr. Mudd made a fateful choice. Disregarding warnings from his managers that lenders were making too many loans that would never be repaid, he steered Fannie into more treacherous corners of the mortgage market, according to executives.
[...]
"Between 2005 and 2008, Fannie purchased or guaranteed at least $270 billion in loans to risky borrowers -- more than three times as much as in all its earlier years combined, according to company filings and industry data."



Democrats Supported Regulatory Oversight But Objected to a White House Power Grab

So if the October 2004 hearings did not address concerns associated with Fannie's risky mortgages, what was everyone talking about? Something quite different, though an ignoramus like George Will could easily conflate the two concepts. An Administration report had skewered Fannie for engaging in some dodgy accounting practices - relating to timing differences over the recognition of income - which had a slight impact on its overall financial metrics. Fannie and its management deserved to be criticized and increased regulatory oversight was absolutely appropriate. But what the House Democrats in the video were objecting to was the Administration's level of overkill. From how they saw things, the Bush Administration was using the pretext of regulatory oversight to accomplish a power grab that would compromise the mission of Fannie Mae. Here's what Barney Frank said at the time:

"I believe we were well on the way, the chairman and I and the staffs, to putting together a bill that would have enhanced the regulator and could have passed. What stopped progress on a new bill was the Bush administration's determination to go beyond safety and soundness and into provisions that would have restricted the housing function.

"To the extent that people played games [with accounting rules] to get bonuses, I'm outraged. People making that much money, let me put it this way, at the level of compensation of the top officers of Fannie Mae, they should get bonuses if they rush into a burning building a rescue a kid, maybe a cat, but not for doing their job. I think it is unseemly of them to be getting bonuses in the first place for doing what they're getting paid very well to do.
[...]
"To the extent that there was manipulation, that is very wrong and should be penalized. But I've seen nothing in here that suggests that the safety and soundness are at issue, and I think it serves us badly to raise safety and soundness as a kind of a general shibboleth, when it does not seem to be the issue."



Banks Governed by The Community Reinvestment Act Were Not The Ones Who Caused the Subprime Market to Expand

Daniel Gross in Slate attacks a lot of the same mythology discussed herein, focusing specifically on phony claims pertaining to the Community Reinvestment Act, which has been around for 30 years and never affected the soundness of the mortgage markets. The CRA never suggested that anyone compromise credit standards and it didn't apply to the mortgage lenders or investment banks who were pumping up subprime mortgages.


Hank Paulson: The mortgage crisis was caused by events that began during the run up to the 2004 election and ended soon after the Democrats took Congress in early 2007.

Again, to understand what happened, begin with understanding when things happened. In this regard, there's no secret. Everyone in financial services knows when and how things happened. Hank Paulson's report to the President reflected the common knowledge expressed by Treasury, the Fed, the SEC and the CFTC:

"The turmoil in financial markets clearly was triggered by a dramatic weakening of underwriting standards for US. subprime mortgages, beginning in late 2004 and extending into early 2007. "[Italics in original text.]
We see this in all the numbers. According to a survey by the New York Fed, about 77% of subprime mortgages and 85% of Alt-A mortgages were issued after 2004. What happened in 2004? Subprime mortgage securitizations were able to take off because, as Bloomberg reported, in August 2004 Moody's and Standard and Poor's loosened their standards for rating mortgage backed securities, which had traded in a highly liquid market for almost 20 years. The impact of the rating agencies' practices cannot be overstated. To date, banks have recognized about $500 billion in losses on subprime mortgages, the lion's share of which were packaged in securities originally rated AAA, i.e. presumed to always be salable at close to par.

In 2004 short term interest rates, reduced by Alan Greenspan to stimulate the economy going in to the election cycle, reached their lowest point, enabling certain buyers to get variable rate mortgages at teaser rates of 3% for the first two years.

Nowhere in Paulson's report will you find anything that suggests that the financial crisis was triggered by, as George Will put it, regulation that compelling lending to "non-productive borrowers" or by Fannie or Freddie, which had been around for decades, "rigging the housing market."

As a final aside, you may remember this little gem from the McCain campaign. It's an ad that claims Obama relied on economic advice from Franklin Raines, which wasn't actually true. What do you think McCain was getting at?